America’s zenith of speed boat excitement, the annual Gold Cup
race, will have its forty-sixth running next Sunday at Seattle. Indeed, this is
the top race in international speed boating circles in all the years when no
Harmsworth event is held.

One new and untried craft from New York and six assorted ones
from Detroit are challengers for the famous old bauble held since 1950 by
Stanley S. Sayres, whose Slo-Mo-Shun IV won the race on the Detroit
River. He has utilized the victor’s prerogative of moving subsequent challenges
to his home city.

But it has been a familiar story in 1951 and 1952. Millionaires
and sportsmen have gone out to Lake Washington, Seattle, and come back so
empty-handed that Detroiters are now acting forlorn and pessimistic about any
early likelihood that Sayres’ boats can be defeated.

However, this year’s race has more interest because Sayres has
committed himself to a barnstorming of Eastern regattas during coming weeks; The
plan is that one or both of his fleet of Slo-Mo-Shuns will race at Red
Bank in the National Sweepstakes, Washington in the President’s Cup and on the
Ohio River at New Martinsville, W. Va., next month in addition to an appearance
in Detroit’s Silver Cup classic on Labor Day.

Fageol to Drive Slo-Mo-Shun V

Slo-Mo-Shun V, winner in 1951, again will be driven by Lou
Fageol, the Ohio sportsman, manufacturer and "father" of the seven-litre class.

Slo-Mo-Shun IV, winner at Detroit in 1950, when driven by
its designer, Ted Jones, and winner last summer of the two-heat race, when
driven by R. Stanley Dollar, will have at the wheel this summer Paul B. Sawyer
Jr., of Rochester, the one-time intercollegiate outboard champion when an
undergraduate at Yale and in recent years famous as an inboard pilot on
American, Italian and Swiss race courses.

The challengers include Etta, the name selected by George
Sarant, auto dealer of Freeport, L. I., for several of his speedboats. He was a
one-time winner of the Harwood race around Manhattan in a previous Etta.

Two Schafer Craft Entered

His current Etta, built in 1951 but untried so far in
competition, is a twin-hulled, catamaran-type of hydroplane, radically different
from the conventional boats, usually three-point hydros, that have been
competing for the Gold Cup year after year. Like all the other challengers,
however, Etta has Allison power.

The others are Detroit entries including two of Jack Schafer’s.
One is his twin-Allison Such Crust which has had new construction during
the past month and will be driven by Chuck Thompson. The other is Such Crust
V, which will be driven by Wild Bill Cantrell.

Others entered are Albin Fallon’s Miss Great Lakes II, to
be driven by Danny Foster, who was the winning driver when the Gold Cup was held
on local Jamaica Bay in 1947; Joseph Schoenith’s Gale II, probably to be
driven by his son Lee, and Gale III whose driver has not been determined;
and Miss United States [Miss U.S. (1)], the new unlimited
speedboat built for George Simon[s], a former Air Force pilot, by Dan Arena.

W. Melvin Crook of New York and Montclair will again serve as
referee. The records for Gold Cup events are already soaring up into the
stratosphere and may go higher this year with the longer laps and longer
straightaways.

The existing lap record for the former distance of three miles
is 108.66 m. p. h. made in 1951 by Slo-Mo-Shun V. The thirty-mile-heat
record stands at 101.02 made last year by the now-retired Miss Pepsi when
driven by Thompson. The ninety-mile course record is 78.22 m. p. h. made by
Slo-Mo-Shun IV at Detroit in 1950 when Ted Jones was the driver.